


brevity

by thraxios (orphan_account)



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion, Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Crossover, if that's not a tag yet it should be, multifandom - Freeform, tiny girls piloting giant robots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-11
Updated: 2013-08-11
Packaged: 2017-12-23 03:02:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/921232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/thraxios
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[a collection of (mostly) 1-shots for multiple fandoms.] ch. 1 [PMMM/NGE]: “You have to get in the robot, Madoka!” cries Kyubey. “You have to get in the robot or everyone is going to die!”</p>
            </blockquote>





	brevity

“You have to get in the robot, Madoka!” cries Kyubey, pushing its body against Madoka, insistent and cat-like. “You have to get in the robot or everyone is going to die!”

 

“But, but I…” Madoka grips the railing tighter and hunches her shoulders as the entire building around them shakes. The entire wall is a screen and she can see Kyoko grab two of the witch’s arms, but the witch has sharp fingers and with her third and fourth arms she stabs them into the stomach of Kyoko’s robot and _pulls_. Madoka and everyone else can hear her yelling and screaming and swearing at the witch, and she lets go of one arm to wrap both hands around the other and stab it backwards into the witch.

 

The witch screams. Kyoko screams. Madoka puts her head down and runs, and Kyubey runs after her.

 

She comes to the hangar and is greeted by the sight of Mami’s unit being carefully laid out, spread-eagled, the plug sticking out of its back like white, broken bone. The plug is still too hot to extract, and LCL leaks out of the cracks, and Mami’s robot’s head has been bitten off completely by one of the witches assaulting the base, and Madoka doesn’t even want to think—

 

The building shakes again and a voice over the intercom begins a countdown to launch a third unit. Sayaka’s robot waits patiently, stock-still and straight as an arrow, and when the countdown ends there’s a _whoosh_ and it disappears up the tunnel. Madoka watches it rocket out of the ground, craters forming as it lands, and then it sprints at the witch and Kyoko. It grabs a knife out of its long shoulder-fin, spins it around in its hand, and leaps.

 

“Miss Kaname!” yells an engineer, and Madoka doesn’t see Sayaka’s landing as she turns (but she feels it, and hears the witch’s shriek) and searches for whoever is trying to get her attention. It’s a man she doesn’t recognize, but there are so many engineers in the hangar, trying to recover Mami and repair her unit and get the other units operational on the off chance that Mami is alive and wants another go at the witch that bit her head off. “You can’t be here, Miss Kaname! Your mother’s gonna kill us if she finds out!”

 

Madoka looks down at Kyubey. The cat-thing shakes its head and leaps onto the railing, directing Madoka’s attention back to the screen walls. Sayaka and Kyoko have managed to subdue the one witch, but the one that took Mami down is slithering around too quickly for them to keep up with, and something is dangling from the center of Kyoko’s unit that looks suspiciously like intestines. Her battery’s almost out besides, and Sayaka’s still too new to piloting a robot that there’s no way she can handle a witch like that on her own.

 

“You have to do this,” says Kyubey. “Well, you don’t _have_ to, but everyone will die if you don’t!”

 

“I need a plugsuit!” Madoka yells down to the engineer, and he and several others around him stop and look up at her. “And a unit!”

 

“Miss Kaname, we can’t—“

 

“Everyone is going to die if I don’t help!”

 

The engineers look at each other, then back and Madoka – one engineer breaks away from the group and disappears, and several minutes later he’s up on the catwalk and running towards Madoka. He hands her a folded-up plugsuit—white and pink, and Madoka thinks that maybe her mother wasn’t so opposed to the idea of her daughter piloting a robot after all—and directs her towards a secluded corner where she can change. The lockers are too far away for her to get back in time to help Sayaka, and the engineers can’t see her anyway as she strips down, pulls the plugsuit on. It fits to her body after a moment, and she steps out back onto the catwalk. Kyubey follows her as she runs and nearly falls down the metal stairs that lead down to the bottom level of the hangar.

 

She’s given a unit she’s never seen before—and that’s saying something, when she spends almost all of her free time in the hangar with Sayaka and Mami and their robots—and almost panics when she climbs into the plug and the LCL washes over her. She breathes it in, relaxes a little bit, and takes a few experimental steps. Nobody is crushed underfoot.

 

 _I can do this_ , Madoka thinks, and steps onto the platform. A countdown begins. She hears Sayaka encouraging her, and Kyoko yelling for Madoka to bring her a replacement battery. The countdown ends, and Madoka shoots upward. The tunnel opens up, and she flails her limbs, and lands hard, the impact jarring her all the way up to her shoulders.

 

“Let’s go, Madoka!” Sayaka cheers, and Madoka runs towards her. The ground shakes under her feet, and she crosses the distance much faster than she anticipates—she tries to skid to a stop, and does so just yards from colliding with Sayaka. The fin on her robot’s right shoulder opens, and she reaches up. Her hand closes around a bow and she breathes a sigh of relief: she’s much better with a bow than she would be with the giant knife that Sayaka has. She looks around for the remaining witch—

 

“ _Madoka_!” Her mother’s voice echoes through the plug, and a window pops up with her in it. She doesn’t look _angry_ , but Madoka can’t quite tell what she’s thinking. “What are you doing? Who gave you permission to pilot that robot?”

 

“I, um... I have to help Sayaka!” Madoka answers. It’s easier than telling her mother that she was convinced by an alien cat to go against her mother’s orders. “If this witch gets through, we’re all going to die anyway, aren’t we?”

 

Her mother doesn’t reply right away. It takes several seconds, and Madoka doesn’t look at the window until her mother says, “Alright, you have a point, but Sayaka is the more experienced pilot here, so you follow her lead. Understood?”

 

“Yes!” Madoka nods eagerly, and the window fades out. It’s replaced by Sayaka, who grins when she sees Madoka in the plug.

 

“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you!” she says. “We’re gonna have to hunt down this last witch, but it shouldn’t be too hard to take out, okay?”

 

 “This is the one that—that attacked Mami, right?” asks Madoka, and Sayaka frowns for a moment before she nods and shrugs.

 

“Yeah, but Mami was just distracted—“

 

“She was too busy watching your ass when she should’ve been watching her own, Sayaka,” Kyoko cuts in, her window appearing just below Sayaka’s.

 

“Ignore her, Madoka! She’s just upset because her unit ran out of batteries.”

 

As if to accentuate Sayaka’s point, Kyoko’s window turns to static, then flickers out.

 

“Here we go!” Sayaka says. Madoka sees her unit crouch down like a runner waiting for the gun to go off. Madoka hesitantly mimics her, and when Sayaka dashes off, Madoka follows. They pass miles of trees and reach the city, where the day’s battle with the witches has already taken its toll, and Madoka hopes everyone was evacuated in time.

 

She sees the trail where the witch has been crawling immediately. It carves its way through streets and pushes aside buildings to squeeze through alleyways. The witch itself is nowhere to be seen, though, and Sayaka suggests splitting up—when Madoka’s mother pops up again with a stern look on her face, Sayaka backtracks hastily and adds, “Don’t worry, don’t worry! I’ll take good care of her!"

 

Madoka heads east at Sayaka’s suggestion. She knows this part of the city, and feels a little better now that she’s in more familiar territory. Sayaka keeps her window open and keeps up a steady stream of conversation, offering little tips about piloting the robot and how excited she is to be protecting the city and—

 

Her window cuts out, and try as Madoka might she can’t establish another connection. They’re miles apart, which really isn’t that great a distance for the robots, but the tall towers are blocking Madoka’s view of Sayaka and she can’t see to tell what’s going on. She opens a window to her mother, who is just as concerned and can’t reach Sayaka either.

 

The ground shakes hard enough that Madoka’s robot loses its balance and she grabs a nearby tower for support. She hears the ground crunching, asphalt and earth being pushed aside as the snake witch slithers somewhere nearby. Madoka can’t see her but she can hear her and that’s worse, at least until Sayaka’s window pops back up and it’s nothing but static and screaming.

 

“Sayaka? Sayaka!” Madoka tries to get through, but the noise is almost deafening and her mother is yelling at her to retreat, come back to base, the witch is too close and they’ve lost Sayaka—

 

The witch rears up right in front of Madoka. It’d be a comical clown-face if its mouth wasn’t a huge O of razor teeth that could easily bite the head right off of Madoka’s robot, and she thinks, _This is the last thing I’m going to see before I die_ as the witch darts forward and all she can see is the black void inside it—

 

The witch crumples under the weight of the robot that stomps on its head, and Madoka’s entire vision is taken up by the lithe black-purple-silver robot. The robot calmly points a giant gun at the witch’s head and pulls the trigger once, twice, three times, until the witch stops struggling and dies. Its body dissolves, falling apart in black smoke, and even in the plug Madoka can feel a great tension leave the air.

 

Sayaka’s window is still screaming at her, and her mother is demanding information, but she’s alive, and that’s what counts.

 

A new window pops up. On the other side is a girl with long, dark hair and cold eyes. “What are you doing out here?” she says. “You’re not supposed to be piloting a robot.”

 

“Um, I, how do you know that?”

 

The girl doesn’t answer. Her robot turns, and she points towards the west, where smoke is rising in black clouds. Madoka doesn’t remember seeing that before. “Your friend’s unit has been infected by a witch, base has given upon her, and you need to go home.”

 

“I can’t just leave Sayaka! She needs—“

 

“You can’t do anything for her!” the girl’s robot whirls around and Madoka flinches back, snapping telephone poles under her feet. “I’m taking care of it. Go home, Madoka Kaname.”

 

She turns again, and rushes away in leaps and bounds and leaves Madoka standing there alone in her robot.

 

A new window pops up, and it’s Kyubey. Madoka nearly forgot about him. “I see you met Homura!” it says. “Too bad about what happened to Sayaka, though. You just weren’t good enough to save her this time, were you?”

 

Madoka doesn’t have a reply to that. She just turns her unit towards base and starts walking.

**Author's Note:**

> aaaha ok this is basically just going to be for me to post short things !! first chapter will probably have a pt 2 at some point but not tonight, peace out


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